Modern Art
 Modern art is a general term used for most of the artistic production from the late 19th century until approximately the 1970s. (Recent art production is more often called Contemporary art or Postmodern art). Modern art refers to the then new approach to art where it was no longer important to represent a subject realistically — the invention of photography had made this function of art obsolete. Instead, artists started experimenting with new ways of seeing, with fresh ideas about the nature, materials and functions of art, often moving further toward abstraction.
The notion of modern art is closely related to Modernism.
History
Roots in the 19th century
By the late 19th century, several movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to emerge: Impressionism, centered around Paris, and Expressionism, which first emerged in Germany.
The influences were varied: from exposure to Eastern decorative arts, particularly Japanese printmaking, to the colouristic innovations of Turner and Delacroix, to a search for more depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such as Jean-François Millet. At the time, the generally held belief was that art should be accurate in its depiction of objects, but that it should be aimed at expressing the ideal, or the domestic. Thus the most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions, or through large public exhibitions of their own work. There were official government sponsored painters' unions, and governments regularly held public exhibitions of new fine and decorative arts.
Thus, breaking with idealization and depiction were not merely artistic statements, but decisions with social and economic results.
These movements did not necessarily identify themselves as being associated with progress, or personal artistic freedom, but instead argued, in the style of the times, that they represented universal values and reality. The Impressionists argued that people do not see objects, but only the light which they reflect, and therefore painters should paint in natural light rather than in studios, and should capture the effects of light in their work.
Impressionist artists formed a group to promote their work, which, despite internal tensions, was able to mount exhibitions. The style was adopted by artists in different nations, in preference to a "national" style. These factors established the view that it was a "movement". These traits: establishment of a working method integral to the art, establishment of a movement or visible active core of support, and international adoption, would be repeated by artistic movements in the Modern period in art.
Early 20th Century
Among the movements which flowered in the first decade of the 20th century were Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism.
World War I brought an end to this phase, but indicated the beginning of a number of anti-art movements, such as Dada and the work of Marcel Duchamp, and of Surrealism. Also, artist groups like de Stijl and Bauhaus were seminal in the development of new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design and art education.
Modern art was introduced to the United States with the Armory Show in 1913, and through European artists who moved to the U.S. during World War I. It was only after World War II, though, that the U.S. became the focal point of new artistic movements. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Op art and Minimal art; in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Land art, Performance art, Conceptual art and Photorealism emerged.
Around that period, a number of artists and architects started rejecting the idea of "the modern" and created typically Postmodern works.
Starting from the post-World War II period, fewer artists used painting as their primary medium; instead, larger installations and performances became widespread. Since the 1970s, new media art has become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means such as video art.
Criticism
Modern art was heavily criticised (some would say misunderstood) while it was being produced. People complained that modern art was indistinguishable from non-art (such as a solid-coloured canvas, a pile of assorted objects, random cacophony (in the case of music) or, in the case of performance art, a mentally ill person. Although some works of modern art received critical acclaim, disapproval was the most common reaction among the general public. Much of the work produced could only be appreciated by other artists, or could not be understood without reading the artist's statement, a text that explained what the art "meant". This era was not the first time that the public could not understand contemporary art (for instance, the works of Mozart were considered challenging to listen to when they were first introduced), but it is the most notable. Modern art may have received a boost from an unlikely quarter: the Nazis set up public exhibitions to mock modern art as "degenerate", and when it became popular to eschew any behaviour that was similar to that of the Nazis, censorship and intolerance decreased throughout the Western world.
Art movements and artist groups
(Chronological with representative artists listed.)
End of 19th century
- Romanticism (the Romantic movement) - Francisco de Goya, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
- Realism - Gustave Courbet
- Impressionism - Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley
- Post-impressionism - Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau
- Symbolism - Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, James Ensor
- Les Nabis - Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Felix Vallotton
- Important pre- or proto-modern sculptors: Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin
Early 20th century (before WWI)
- Art Nouveau and national variants (Jugendstil, Modern Style, Modernisme) - Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, In Architecture and Design: Otto Wagner, Wiener Werkstätte, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Koloman Moser
- Expressionism - Oskar Kokoschka, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde
- Fauvism - André Derain, Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, Maryse Casol
- Die Brücke - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
- Der Blaue Reiter - Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc
- Cubism - Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso
- Orphism - Robert Delaunay, Jacques Villon
- Futurism - Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà
- Russian avant-garde - Kasimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov
- De Stijl - Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian
- Sculpture: Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi
- Photography: Pictorialism, Straight photography
Between WWI and WWII
- Exploration of the fantastic - Marc Chagall
- Pittura Metafisica - Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà
- Dada - Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Kurt Schwitters
- New Objectivity - Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz
- Meanwhile, in France, artists like Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Chaim Soutine were part of a regression from the pre-WWI experimentation.
- Surrealism - Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, André Masson, Joan Miró
- Constructivism - Naum Gabo, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin
- Bauhaus - Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- Sculpture: Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, René Iché, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso
- Scottish Colourists - Francis Cadell, Samuel Peploe, Leslie Hunter, John Duncan Fergusson
After WWII
- Abstract expressionism - Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock
- Art brut - Adolf Wölfli, Hans Krüsi, Benjamin Bonjour, Alois Wey
- Arte Povera - Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto
- Color field painting - Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko
- COBRA - Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn
- Dau-al-Set - First art movement after WWII founded in Barcelona by poet/artist Joan Brossa. Included Antoni Tàpies, Enrique Tábara, Antonio Saura
- Hard-edge painting - Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, Ronald Davis
- Land art - Christo, Richard Long, Robert Smithson
- Les Automatistes - Claude Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Marcelle Ferron
- Minimal art - Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra
- Postminimalism - Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman,
- Lyrical Abstraction - Ronnie Landfield, Sam Gilliam
- Neo-figurative art - Fernando Botero, Antonio Berni
- Neo-Fauvism - Maryse Casol
- New realism - Christo, Yves Klein, Pierre Restany
- Op art - Victor Vasarely
- Outsider art - Ignacio Carles-Tolrà, Adam Dario Keel, Ulrich Bleiker, John Elsass
- Photorealism - Chuck Close, Duane Hanson
- Pop art - Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol
- Postwar European figuration: Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, René Iché, Marino Marini, Henry Moore
- Shaped canvas - Frank Stella
- Soviet art - Alexander Deineka, Alexander Gerasimov, Ilya Kabakov, Dubossarski & Winogradow, Komar & Melamid, Collective Action Group
Important Modern art exhibitions and museums
- Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
- documenta, five-yearly exhibition of modern and contemporary art, Kassel, Germany
- Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Berlin, Las Vegas, New York, Venice
- High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
- Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo, Guayaquil, Ecuador
- Museo de Arte Moderno, México D.F.
- Museum Ludwig, Cologne
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
- Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium
- Tate Modern, London
- Venice Biennial
- Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
- Whitney Museum of American Art,
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